Long ago, long before the teeth, Käthe had asked to join him on these little excursions, but he wouldn’t have it, and in time she had come to value these periods of solitude as much as he did. Sometimes, after he left, she would pick a book off a shelf and try to read it, usually without success. At other times, she would light candles in the sitting room and pray quietly for hours. And that’s what she did now. After she had sent him off with his stick and a pouch of sliced fruit, after she had uttered the usual warnings about wolves and mischievous children, she closed the door and lit some candles in the sitting room at the far end of the house. While he was toddling alone through the crooked village streets, past the overhanging eaves and dung piles and rubbish heaps, toward the dirt path that led through the sour-smelling vineyards, she was brushing her dress and arranging her hair—for you must be presentable when you talk to God. By the time he had found his favorite tree, an old beech that he remembered from childhood, and while he was leaning against it eating the fruit and picking his teeth with a twig, Käthe was on her knees thanking God for sending Herr Bamberg these good new teeth. She didn’t pretend to know why He had done this—if the teeth were a test of some kind, or a compensation for the hardships He had inflicted upon Herr Bamberg, or a reward, though she could hardly say for what—but she knew they were a benevolence, and she knew that she was the only one who would thank Him for it.
Herr Bamberg began referring to these outings as picnics. Käthe, in secret, called them sacraments.
Soon Saint Martin’s Day arrived, and with it a letter from Herr Bamberg’s son. The boy who brought it was so startled when old Bamberg opened the door that he ran off without waiting for his coin. Herr Bamberg took the letter to the table and propped it against the candelabrum. So they would not be coming, he thought. He already knew this, but still it was a disappointment. In the old days, when they had been a family, Saint Martin’s Day had been his son’s favorite feast. He had loved parading through the village with the other boys, marching up and down in burlap masks with pine-tar torches, extorting sweetmeats from the villagers. In those days the Bambergs had a cook, and the cook would make buns that looked like old men smoking licorice pipes, and she would roast a suckling pig with mushrooms the children had gathered from the woods, and they would invite the neighbors in. It was his wife’s favorite time of year, too.
Herr Bamberg lowered himself into his chair and called for Käthe to bring out the meal, which this year was roast goose and cabbage. He stared at the sealed letter while he and Käthe ate, wondering if perhaps his son was asking for money; normally he didn’t bother responding to his father’s invitations at all. Käthe ate little, and Herr Bamberg ate slowly, relishing the pink, oily goose and the slippery cabbage. When he was finished, and when Käthe had poured out the last of the red wine, he broke the seal and read it.
“Dear Papa,” it said in large, thick letters. “Many pleasant greetings of the season. I regret that I shall be unable to join you this year, as the press of work keeps me occupied all of my days. I enclose a lock of little Elsie’s hair. Our boy Karl married a nice girl three years ago, and Elsie, who is two, is their daughter. I am a grandfather now, Papa, and you are a great-grandfather. Mama would be overjoyed at this news, don’t you think? Sincerest regards from your son, Hermann.”
“What?” said Käthe, for the old man had gone as pink as the goose. “Is it bad news?”
“No,” he said, picking up the lock of hair from where it had fallen on the table. The hair was pale yellow, almost white like his own, the sort of color you only see on very young children. “It is not bad news.”
“Is it the wine? Do you need to rest?”
“No,” he said. “I do not need to rest. I would like to be left alone now.”
So Käthe wiped his mouth and rose from the table, removing the empty plates as she went. Herr Bamberg sat there for a long time in the flickering light, turning the lock of infant hair over in his fingers, working his jaws back and forth so that his teeth scraped together. His wife had saved locks from all of their children’s hair when they were around this age. All but one were dead now, some from the mysterious illnesses of childhood, some from the afflictions of old age. Käthe had screamed the day she found the little bundles of hair in the drawer in the wardrobe. She thought they were mice.